"An incident at the annual Python developer conference has led to allegations of sexism, death threats, the firings of two people, and - apparently - multiple DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks." Absolutely bizarre.

Men with "difficult personalities" are a dime a dozen in the tech sphere. None of them get near the ration of virulent hatred that a woman who speaks up does. We see this kind of behavior online on a practically weekly basis.

And lets be frank. "Difficult personality" when applied to a woman is usually just code for "woman who speaks up for herself."

Men with "difficult personalities" are a dime a dozen in the tech sphere. None of them get near the ration of virulent hatred that a woman who speaks up does. We see this kind of behavior online on a practically weekly basis.

And lets be frank. "Difficult personality" when applied to a woman is usually just code for "woman who speaks up for herself."

You're right, but in the wrong context. I don't think your comment deserves to be so far down, but neither do I think Ms. Richards deserves the benefit of the doubt. It's clear from her history that she prefers to escalate conflict rather than resolve it.

But the feelings and double standards you point to are real, and the worst thing is, as the parent comment's link points out, her actions only make it worse. Instead of trying to change the tone of the room, she decided to escalate hostilities.

Being fired will only validate her persecution complex. For the man making the jokes, being fired is not a lesson in sympathy, but in fearing bullies. For the rest of the culture, having Adria Richards as an example reinforces the notion that feminism is irrational, aggressive, humorless, and dangerous. For women in the industry, employers may learn to weigh a fear of this kind of incident against an applicant's competence. No one comes out of this better for it. But hey, she scored some press. To quote the linked blog post:

All she had to consider was “what outcome am I looking for?”. If the outcome is “change the way these men are speaking” she’d have taken a different route. If “make as big a deal of this as humanly possible with no thought to consequence” was her outcome, she chose right.